A Great Shame

It's rather deplorable that at this stage of the Investment Specialisation, this course falls short of meeting the minimum requirements to be an academic, or academic-related course provided by the University of Geneva. As a matter of fact, Week 4 in its entirety was a sham and a disgrace. I plead with the course creators and academics to respect their titles and immediately intervene to do the following:

1- Completely overhaul Week 4 by improving the lectures, enrich with examples and give more elaborate explanations

2- Re-write the entire subtitles for this course

3- Incorporate parts of Week 4 with Week 1 to make the course more symmetrical

4- Pay special attention to providing new lectures on VaR, Expected Shortfall, and currency Hedging

This is very good. I am grateful for the mathematics at the base of the theoretical structure, but I for one need more drilling. I am looking forward to the rest of the courses.

This is a good introductory course to whom has never worked with or studied investing. Instructors are clear and didactical. In this review I will focus on three main points of improvement:

1) Not deepening in Portfolio’s Risk formulas/calculations: lots were said about how correlation and (co)variance of individual assets can influence the whole portfolio’s risk. Though, It was not taught how to calculate the whole portfolio’s risk (ex.: how to do a variance-covariance matrix).

2) Not applying what was taught in practical and holistic cases (considering multiple classes of assets and risk profile): I believe many of those who attended to this course want as output to conduct a Portfolio Optimization. Although we know all the concepts behind Modern Portfolio Theory’s and Diversification, none can apply it in an excel or to a given case. For that, I found a really interesting tutorial video from Dr. Colby Wright in YouTube that helped me on that. It was simple and would be a great conclusion if added to this course.

3) Debating Modern Portfolio Theory’s theoretical limitations, but not leading to new theories or more applicable one’s to surpass its limitations.

I do know this course is one of a series of other courses in a Specialization. Maybe some of those points of improvement is answered in another course. I hope instructors might consider the course design and review the points in order to improve attendant’s learning, event if we do not attend the whole specialization.

There were some instances where formulas were required on the quizzes that were not thoroughly explained in the lectures. There also appears to be some statistical background required that was not specified in the pre-reqs. However, I did find it really informative.

I am really impressed and have learnt a lot from the topics covered in this course. However, I believe the learning curve shot up very sharply from Week 3 to Week 4. There is a lot more that could have been talked about Options and Forwards, and I don't think the course did justice to the subject, and the pace at which it escalated makes me wonder how long I'll be able to retain it.

A good course overall, although the last module was not upto the mark. Could've been more detailed about hedging of currency risk. Counterparty risk wasn't explained. Options and forward contract was just read out of the slides. However, the course held up its value due to Prof Michel and Prof Tony Barrada, and Prof Olivier.

Thoroughly engaging presentation of a topic that was very much esoteric to me previously. I would highly recommend this course to anyone looking for insight into portfolio and risk management.

An excellent course in terms of learning a number of new concepts like the Modern Portfolio Theory, and its limitations. Profiling customers, constructing strategic and tactical portfolios, the pros and cons of investing across geographies and currencies, hedging risks and concepts like VaR and Expected Shortfall-these concepts were taught with great empathy and passion. Macroeconomic variables to help in market timings were also a revelation. The only suggestion I have is for a more balanced quanti-quali mix.

Definitely not for people without economical and some math knowledge, but Great content, and fully recommend for anybody looking to improve their knowledge to better take care of your portfolio!

The great course contains useful information and is not overwhelmed with complicated math. Professor Michel Girardin has a talent to give useful knowledge and combines it with a good sense of humor. I was mainly interested in the last part of the course (i.e. portfolio risk management). It gives me some useful answers for my questions, but not those I've expected for. Anyway, the course is worth to be learned if you're interested in finance/investments and/or portfolio management.

I am first time writing a review for any product or service. I am just writing this review to Professor Michel Girardin. Professor is great person with eminence amount of theoretical and practical knowledge. I got many valuable insights from this course like Shiller's CAPE, Homo oeconomicus vs Homo sapiens. In short, I will recommend this course to everyone whether novice or expert as this course offers something from everyone. Great thanks to all facility.

Really great. I have an MBA in Finance and Operations from the mid 90ies. But I never really used much of the Finance knowledge. This was a perfect reminder into Portfolio Management, CAPM, and the use of Options, Forwards, etc. I very much enjoyed the course.

Great! This course will help you learn how to make a proper portfolio which optimally matched to your risk&return preference and how to manage your portfolio's risk level with financial instruments.

Good course. Highly recommended for Risk Managers who are looking for digging more into Efficient frontier, Value-at-Risk, Expected Shortfall, Variance-Covariance approach, etc.

i recommend this course for every one interested to understand the dynamics of financial markets and the future trends of financial markets and portfolio management

This course has disappointed me. My expectations before the course (based on the first two courses in this specialization) were far better than what I actually got. I appreciate the efforts done on the course, but I am very sorry to say that watching some YouTube videos and reading practical articles on Investopedia will give anyone more understanding of portfolio allocation and risk management from a practical point of view than the pure theory presented here. I do not know if anybody reviewed the presented formulas or their explanation in week 4 from a leaner’s point of view: they suddenly exceed the whole gradual level of the specialization and do not present any practical value to a normal investor. The explanation of the efficient frontier was attractive, but again unpractical. Did the course teach me how to extract the numbers from company data to calculate an efficient frontier of a possible real-life portfolio in order to determine the best allocation? Hardly ever. In conclusion, I do not recommend this course.

The level of presenting is rather disappointing and shallow, given the connection and sponsporship of the UBS: the UBS itself had extremely useful teaching courses and materials on the subject, so it's a shame I had to waste so much time to listen to talking of no practical value.

Lots of gaps and even errors, e.g. there's no explanation or even a formula how a variance of a portfolio would be derived - and in the calc quiz there's a mistake when the covariance was replaced by correlation (omitting multiplying by the variances of both stocks); another example - no explanation of R-squared.

Nothing numerical of practical use.

Very wishy-washy presented and therefore very hard course to digest, especially Expected Shortfall and Value-at-Risk part of the course. All descriptions of formulas are squeezed in a few minutes and vaguely explained. The complete first week is also very difficult to understand without real-life examples, UBS guest speakers could make things much better here. I have to say that I am very disappointed, I've enjoyed two previous courses a lot.

A lot of formulas and theory which if attempted by the casual investor would quickly overwhelm him and reduce him to a babbling idiot with no investments.

One useful tip: Use a 20% drop in "Consumer Confidence" to warn you of an impending recession and sell everything; back into equity when the Consumer Confidence level gets back to its trigger point.

Excellent course providing good,high level and fundamental understanding on regression line, scatter plot,distribution of returns in numbers and graphical representation, strategic and tactical allocations, currency risk.

However in week 4 forward and options, managing risk can be explained in detail and with some additional example.

Video quality and execution of course is very subtle,professional and amazing.

However, it is recommended to have some basic quality understanding of finance before taking this course. Also, if given this course little much more time through finding additional and in depth details about topics it is worth understanding.

Professors and UBS guests are very informative and straightforward which makes course very splendid.

I really enjoyed this course. As someone planning a career in wealth management, this was my first exposure to financial knowledge and I learned a lot about risk management and portfolios. Modern Portfolio Theory, including efficient frontiers, mean-variance optimisation, as well as it's shortcomings. Derivatives, market timing, defining value at risk, managing risks associated to foreign currency exchange rates were all covered as well from experienced and effective professors from the University of Geneva as well as guest speakers from UBS. Many thanks!

Excellent course, it helped me to deepen how to approach risks in such a way that I achieve strategies such as the allocation of assets tactically and strategically. On the other hand, to apply coverage for eventual losses using the derivatives market, short operations, option sales. Also to minimize the risk of the exchange rate for example of international stocks from a US market to a Swiss market I can buy a fordward option to compensate for losses.

I only have thanks and compliments to make about the Portfolio and Risk Management course. I had been waiting for a course like this to appear for a while and there was no opportunity. The UBS Professors and Guests enriched us with their content and their experiences, all very safe and convinced, great scholars and excellent professionals. Without a doubt, my goals have been achieved. I am very grateful to everyone at the University of Geneva.

it was highly informative and could revise my entire syllabus at once. i'm really happy with this course, for beginners it could be a little difficult to understand at once but its got a lot of easy concepts, but the once who have already been studying it can easily understand for them this could be like a revision. this course it something i'd like to recommend for people to take up.

Another 5* course from the University of Geneva team.. Great course to understand critical concepts on portfolio management and different ways to measure risk. It might do better with a few more practical examples (i.e. on how to effectively apply the theories with softwares like Excel or similar), but overall it gives all the basics upon which a student can build their own knowledge.